Jewish American fiction, women writers, Jewish Orthodoxy, religion, community, shtetl, Allegra Goodman, Rebecca Goldstein

This paper explores the image of the closed Orthodox Jewish communities as depicted in the novels of two contemporary Jewish American women writers - Allegra Goodman and Rebecca Goldstein. It focuses on the tension between religious tradition and secular forces from the outside world that influence the life of these communities and break their homogeneity, especially in their intergenerational relations. The paper also probes into the struggle of the Orthodox Jews to reconcile their traditions with modernity. This subject is analyzed in Goldstein's novel Mazel and particularly in Goodman's Kaaterskill Falls, a novel which gives the reader a rich portrait of the diversity of the Orthodox Jewish community in New York.